For AAA games, discs have just been fancy download codes for the last decade. I don’t understand getting upset is now; if these retailers were going to “honor the people who pay their hard earned money to purchase it,” they should’ve started complaining a long time ago.

The Outer Wilds

All due respect to the other recommendations in this thread (The Witcher 3 is in my top 3 favorite games ever), but I get the sense you’re looking for a similar vibe - that self-paced, quiet, almost lonely exploration where, though you do have a goal, the point of the game is to wander the world and discover things. While most of these recs (and most open world games in general, so it’s understandable) have a strong story focus, The Outer Wilds will give you that quiet, unguided exploration BoTW does so well.

(And I know explicitly turned down souls-likes, but Elden Ring also hits that vibe super well. If you’re really stuck for something to play, it might be worth a try with one of the magic-focused builds that significantly reduce the skill needed)

I recently got a Kobo Clara Colour and I’ve been quite pleased so far. It was trivial to upload all my books from Calibre onto it. Not the cheapest, but the resolution is sharp and you can actually turn off the backlight unlike some others.

Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon is like Skyrim but with better combat and dar King Arthur themed.

Potion Craft is a game where you run an alchemist shop, entirely stylized to look like medieval paintings.

Buddy Simulator 1984 is a game about a digital companion that likes you too much.

I could give more, but I never see anyone recommend those, and you have a lot of recommendations in this thread already.

Boy Boy

Neon White, Cyberhook, and Crumble are all excellent, though you might be looking for a more traditional platformer.

Blue Fire is decent and definitely worth checking out while it’s $4 right now.

Full story Machinima style series are rare, but if you just want heavy editing and a somewhat coherent plot as opposed to nearly unedited gameplay, Alpharad and LarsBurrito might work. Alpharad heavily edits his videos and usually writes a script to go over the gameplay that does a good job pulling a story out of the footage. LarsBurrito does a similar style, but also often does themed playthroughs where he writes the script to flavor the playthrough to fit whatever character he’s roleplaying as.

If you want actual story but are ok with significantly less editing, Mianite is a series I rewatch every once in a while in a similar way you describe. The scripted story doesn’t really start picking up until a significant way through season 1, but there is still enough conflict between the different players to make it more than just a Let’s Play.

Indeed. The sources I’ve read seem to lay blame with games not usually patenting mechanics (which apparently is all patent officers look at for prior art, not other games), meaning it needs active challenging to be thrown out.

PocketPair is based in Japan, which is where the previous, more directly problematic patents have been filed mid-litigation. While there is clearly prior art for the US patent, it isn’t quite as comically broad as the Japan ones, and since Japan doesn’t seem to care about prior art, those remain the most concerning to me.

In the US, yes. In Japan, it would appear such a concept does not exist.

Yeah but not raw milk straight from the udder (unless you enjoy salmonella), letting it dribble down your chin and get in your beard (unless that’s what does it for you I guess, you do you)

My main gripe with TLJ is that the editing is a total mess. Multiple scenes lose continuity between shots. The most egregious example is the milk scene, which in addition to being gross and unnecessary, was clearly jammed in between two shots meant to be continuous. Rey and Luke start walking down a skinny peninsula, no space cow in sight, then hard cut to space cow and Luke milking it, then hard cut back to the end of the peninsula and Luke setting down his stuff.

I found one for NieR: Automata at a used bookstore that has maps, a ton of concept art, and a short story.

It is a little insane how many games release on any given day. On July 15, 2025, 150 “titles” (of which 78 are actual games, not demos or DLC) were added to the Steam store. I would guess that their data includes all titles, but even just 78 real games on what should be a slower-than-average random Tuesday could totally contribute to 34,000 games released in a year.

I see lots of discussion about the solution / what used to be done, but I want to point out why unofficial servers stopped being easy/standard/possible to run.

The first time big money entered esports was on private Starcraft LAN tournaments. Blizzard sued to get a cut of the proceeds, but because the privately-owned software (game and server) was running on privately-owned hardware, the courts ruled that Blizzard got no money.

AAA companies learned from this that allowing the playerbase to run their own servers meant losing out on money, so most AAA multiplayer games with even a small chance of ending up as esports make it so they can only connect to servers operated by themselves, longevity of the game be damned. If they weren’t so desparate for every scrap of cash they could possibly generate from the game, I would bet most multiplayer game would still let you run your own servers, like they used to.

Graphics are, like it or not, the main thing the majority of people look for first when they go to buy a game, and raytracing is a ridiculously easy way to achieve that in comparison to the time and skill required to elevate traditional lighting to that same level of beauty. PS5 and XSX both support raytracing, and PC graphics cards that don’t are coming up on 10 years old at this point.

Any AAA developer is going to see those two facts, that it’s way cheaper and runs on most of the market’s hardware, and abandon development work on traditional lighting. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is RT-only, and it was a huge success.

DLSS is in a similar boat - it reduces the need to spend time and money on optimization.

Now, let me be clear, I lament both of these facts. I think raytracing looks gorgeous, and DLSS is usually a nice performance boost for minimal tradeoff, but I don’t think every game should look photorealistic, and some games just don’t look good with DLSS on. What I’m saying is they both make game development cheaper and faster for very little relative downside, so I wouldnt be surprised if all AAA games required raytracing within the next few years.

I disagree with many of his views, but I definitely wouldn’t call him right-wing. He seems to me more like a libertarian from before “don’t tread on me” actually meant “please tread on me.” Hell, he’s said the CEO of Nestle should be shot.

Only for chicken, for salmonella reasons, and steak, because I’m terrible at judging doneness without it.

Here, though there isn’t anything super concrete.

In a physical medium, it’s way cheaper and easier to make light color thing dark than make a dark colored thing light. “Dark mode” books would require dyeing each sheet black, then painting the text on top of each sheet, rather than what is currently done, where we bleach each sheet white, then dye the text into each sheet.

Somewhat related - this is why printers use CMYK, rather than RGB. Computer screens use pure light, so they simply emit whatever combination of light they need to, and your eyes add them together. In a physical medium, however, what we see is based on what is reflected, i.e. not absorbed. Hence, each color of ink, in additive terms, is two colors together (cyan is green+blue, magenta is red+blue, etc). When you combine CMYK colors, you can precisely control what wavelengths of light are being absorbed in order to reflect the correct color.

I dropped KCD 1 after ~30 hours for the same reason as you, but at least KCD has some justification - the whole point of the game is to be an ultra-realistic simulation of medieval life, a roleplaying game in the truest sense of the word.

Your character starts out not even knowing how to read, even though you, the player, obviously do to interact with the GUI. He’s the son of a blacksmith who never would have learned anything else, so he, the character, has to spend time learning basically everything, even if you, the player, already have it figured out.

You and I think that design is unfun. Clearly, though, there’s an audience for it, as KCD 2 sold something like a million copies on launch day and instantly recouped their development costs.